Willard, Frances E. Home Protection Manual: Containing an Argument for the Temperance Ballot for Woman, and How to Obtain it, as a Means of Home Protection; Also Constitution and Plan of Work for State and Local W.C.T. Unions . New York: 'The Independent', 1879. [format: book], [genre: essay; guidebook]. Permission: Public domain
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=fewhome.html

1. It is thought by some that the Home Protection movement can be adopted only by those states which work on the Local Option line. But this is a mistake. The campaign can be twofold, and of this Ohio is likely to furnish an example. Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, of Ravenna, O., president of its W. C. T. U., will gladly give information on this point to any who desire it.

2. It is said that Local Option is an inconsistency, for no community would ever place a bill against stealing before the people for their option, and the liquor traffic is a crime as bad as stealing. But no law was ever enacted against stealing, except as the result of an option (a free choice) in the legislatures of state and nation. It was voted upon, and men voted as they chose. The immense public sentiment in favor of such a law caused the vote to be unanimous, and this will some day be the case with prohibitory law. Meanwhile, in states where the sentiment would not yet give us a prohibitory law (which we could only get by a local option in the locality known as the "Halls of Legislation"), let us not say to less conspicuous places — municipalities, for instance — that because the whole state will not they may not vote the legalized dram-shop out of their boundaries. Since in a representative government we can pass no law except by leaving it open to the chances of a "local option," and since this same option is the only possible method by which we can delegate to localities under a government "of the people, by the people," power to enact in the territory nearest them and in which they are most interested a prohibitory law, therefore, local option is a necessity per se and the surest forerunner of that more general form of Local Option popularly known as Prohibition. (See further on p. 23, "Local Option.")

4. It is said that men would sooner give us prohibition than the temperance ballot. The experience of Illinois refutes this argument. (See p. 8.) There is an element of justice in our request for power to overthrow the rum-shop to which men respond as to no other plea we have ever made along this line.

5. It is said that by taking up this work our W. C. T. Unions ally themselves with the woman suffrage movement, largely conducted in the past by those who did not believe in Orthodox Christianity. But, if the movement for the temperance ballot is right, then whoever cares for the right ought to help ally it with Christ's Church; and when an army of temperance women in nine states have done this it becomes a movement of the Church.

6. "But, if the National W. C. T. U. does not endorse a plan of work, neither should the state unions do so," is the last objection. Let it be remembered, however, that the "National" has twice endorsed the movement for woman's temperance ballot, and that, since its representation takes color from the locality in which its annual meeting is held, its utterances are necessarily sometimes inconsistent with each other, while no state which has once endorsed the movement has ever retreated from its advance position. It seems fair that in so extended an organization each state should be free to magnify certain methods and to add new plans, as its local circumstances render these helpful. But that no state should have any method of work urged upon it by the National Union until it has, as a State, endorsed that method, seems equally fair. Hence, while the states which believe in Home Protection have sought each year to have a resolution in its favor, and have each year gained some advance (by resolution at Cincinnati and Chicago, by petition at Newark, and by opening the columns of Our Union to the subject at Baltimore), they have never asked that it be made a part of the National Plan of Work, and will not until a majority of the states have adopted the measure.